Thinking of a total fresh install of MacOS Sierra - help prepare please

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Thinking of a total fresh install of MacOS Sierra - help prepare please

I have a late 2012 iMac 8Gb RAM, 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB. I will be upgrading to MacOS Sierra when released officially.

So I'm currently on v10.11.6, not sure what my iMac originally came with, but I've just always updated to new MacOS when they've came out.

I'm thinking this time I may re-install from fresh, as it seems a little slow, glitchy (keyboard on log on, not working specifically a lot), and maybe just to get everything back to how it should.

is this a good idea? what do I need to do when MacOS Sierra comes out, how would I install form fresh? do I need to download an image for a USB pen or something?

More importantly, I will run Time Machine backup, but obviously I won't want to recover from this, so as a backup I will, but what else will I manually need to backup and how.

I basically have spent hours and hours of my life organising my Photos and iTunes, so can I just copy the original folder of these to a USB drive, then put them back in on MacOS Sierra? what else, just copy any files from the user folder and drop that back in?

I'm computer literate, but never done a complete reinstall on Mac, have on Windows often (a pain!)

thanks

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Sep 12, 2016 3:22 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,696 points

Sep 17, 2016 3:03 PM in response to QwertyMan11

If I was going to do that, here is how I would do it:

Back up using Time Machine (though a clone would be sufficient).
Download the installer and create a bootable USB installer. Either use this method, Create a bootable installer for OS X - Apple Support, or DiskMakerX.
The installer will run when you download it; just quit and make the installer USB stick.
Boot into Internet Recovery (or possibly the bootable USB stick if DU is available) and completely erase the Disk.
Boot into the USB installer (if not already) and install the OS.
When completely installed and the Startup Assistant asks for a new user name, create a user that you are not using currently. You can keep that as the admin user.
Use Migration Assistant to migrate your user files from the backup.
I would not migrate the applications and would install them from original install media or from App Store. In Migration Assistant, you cannot pick and choose the apps you restore--It's all or nothing. If you migrate all apps, you might as well have just upgraded over the top and not bothered with all of this.

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Answer 2

Sep 18, 2016 3:22 AM in response to QwertyMan11

I have also been considering doing this as well. I also have

been doing upgrades over top of old for a while and over time

have installed/uninstalled apps and have likely accumulated a lot

of flotsam and jetsam over the years and simply thing a fresh

start may be in order.

However, my system is running quit smoothly and without issue.

As you said:

QwertyMan11 wrote:

....

I'm thinking this time I may re-install from fresh, as it seems a little slow, glitchy (keyboard on log on, not working specifically a lot), and maybe just to get everything back to how it should.

....

I would first ferret out these issues before even considering any upgrade move

regardless of the method. If there is some hardware issue involved, it could only

get worse with the upgrade.

Personally, I would do a clone backup instead of Time Machine. Reason being if

anything goes awry, you can immediately reboot to your previous operating state

and troubleshoot or restore it. Restoring a clone is usually much quicker (and reliable)

than Time Machine when upgrades are involved. Also, if the install goes well, it also seems

that Migration Assistant is somewhat quicker with a clone as well versus Time Machine.

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